Archives for September 2010

Special diets (unlike regular old diets like Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers, or even simpler ones like the Slow Carb Diet) are almost always a result of some sort of food intolerance or disease. Lactose intolerance requires that the afflicted person refrain from milk and dairy product that contain lactose. Of course, there are milk and dairy replacements. You can buy soy milk or almond milk, for instance, to replace the commonly used cows milk. The difference is cost.

Another special diet is the gluten free diet. Gluten is one of the building block proteins in grass grains like wheat, rye, and barley (and others). Stop for a second and think about that. Do a mental assessment of your pantry. How much of that stuff has one of those grains in it? Now, add about 20% or so, because much of it that you wouldn’t think has those grains (or their by-products) in it, does. Soy sauce? Wheat. Soup? Wheat flour for thickening. Seasoning mixes? Wheat flour. There are replacements for almost all of those things. And, again, the main difference is cost. (well, some flavor too, but that’s another topic for another day.)

It’s how much?!?

How much of a price difference are we talking? Around here, a gallon of 1% fat cows milk costs about $3.50. On Amazon, right now, you can buy an 18 pack of 8.25 ounce Silk Soy Milks for $20. Let’s compare ounce for ounce. The cows milk costs about $0.028 per ounce. ($3.50/128 ounces) The soy milk? $0.135 per ounce. ($20/148.5 ounces) That’s a difference of over $0.10 an ounce. There’s 128 ounces in a gallon. How many gallons of milk do you and your family use in a given week or month? If you want to talk about gluten replacements, the average price for a loaf of gluten free bread is about $6. I bought wheat bread at the store the other day for $1.29! Pasta is just as bad. A package of gluten free spaghetti is usually about $3-5. The wheat stuff can be found, on sale, for about $0.25-$1.00 for an equivalent size package.

Budget Breaker

It doesn’t take an accountant to add that up and figure out how much of a difference in your finances a special diet can make. Or, how much of a skewing factor it plays in a budget. Suddenly, your budget for food has to be quite a bit higher than it used to be. And, of course, the financial toll is that it sucks up funds that could easily be used for something else should the diet not be necessary.

Planning for the Extra Cost

If you have to eat a special diet, you probably know the added cost that it adds to your budget. But, what about someone just venturing into a special diet? How do you budget for the extra cost? You can either do your research and get a really good idea of what it will cost, or you can just leave yourself a very nice cushion until you know for sure. Researching is probably the more likely choice, I would think. Take a look on Amazon and see what some of the replacement items will cost. Compare to what you normally buy. That should give you a rough guess as to how much your costs will increase for certain items. Using your normal expenditure as a starting point, you can then make an educated guess as to how much you should budget for in the coming months as you begin your special diet.

Eat Fresh

Another way to offset some of the cost is to eat more fresh food. Adding more fruit and vegetables into your diet won’t increase your cost any more than the new special diet food and will likely make you healthier for it.

The green industry is great for the planet, but it’s still an industry, and some argue an elitist one. Switching to hybrids and shopping solely from Whole Foods are neither frugal nor often green options (if you’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, you’ll know that Big Organic is a lie).

Concentrating wholly on frugality, however, can also be damaging both for our bodies and the planet. Yes, the dollar menu is cheap, but it’s a first-class ticket to heart disease and perpetuates the evils of urban farming. For those of us looking for a happy medium, read on.

Support local farmers at your farmer’s market.
Meat can be more expensive here, but most family farmers have healthier, happier animals than those in CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation), which means healthier final products. Try also to buy whole chickens instead of just legs so you’ll get more for your money. Vegetables are often cheaper at these markets than at local grocery stores. You’ll save money and help boost your community’s economy.

Cook your own meals. It’s hard to do with our busy schedules, but the payoff is worth it, since you’ll be saving money on produce you buy from the farmer’s market and getting less packaging, which means less trash. Since basic supplies like flour, sugar, salt, and such are cheap and go a long way, you’ll find that you save money even by making your own pancakes in the morning rather than buying packaged ones from the store. If you don’t have time in the morning, make the batter and keep it in the fridge overnight. Even the kids can toss a batch on the frying pan by themselves, saving you cents and time.

Cultivate your own garden. Basic herbs like basil, rosemary, and thyme are low-maintenance and can be grown even on your apartment patio. If you’ve got land, though, try your hand at tomatoes, garlic, onions, green onions, carrots, and the like. It’s better to spend your time with the earth than with cable TV, anyway (as long as you wear that sunscreen). This brings us to our next point:

Get rid of your cable. Most TV shows are online these days, anyway, and one HD cable can hook your laptop up to your TV. Seeing as a monthly cable bill can cost anywhere from $30 to $70, you’ll make up for the cable in two to four months, tops.

Stop going to see movies and renting them at Blockbuster. There are plenty of movies on Netflix you can get for just over the price of one movie ticket a month. You’ll save on gas money, too.

Learn to sew and DIY. Ripped your pants? No need to go out and buy a new pair. If you deem it irreparable, at least go to a thrift store first so as to limit waste.

Go easy on the spray cleaners. Most of the things in spray cleaners are horrible for the water system and the environment in general, not to mention your own lungs. Varying mixtures of vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice, and essential oils do the trick in most cases and will cost you less.

Use towels, not paper towels. Americans have become obsessed with disposables. Everything is disposable now. Are we too good to use the same thing twice? Throw a dish rag into the washer and use it again, and when it gets old, use it as a cleaning rag. We’ve spoiled ourselves enough—isn’t that why we’re in a recession, anyway?

Are you aware that the company that developed and markets the FICO score has little to no rules as to how it does so? There’s no oversight into the algorithm that it uses to create your credit score. There’s no regulation that delineates what factors they should take into account or how heavily they should weight them.

So what, you say? Think about this for a second. Your credit score determines whether you get a credit card or not. Whether you get a mortgage or not. Whether you get a car or not. Some businesses are even using the credit score to help determine the worthiness of a potential employee. Despite all that influence in your life, there’s nothing to keep them from deciding that the one late payment you had a year ago is enough to drop you several hundred points. Sure, that’s not the way it works right now, but there is nothing to keep them from doing so.

In a perfect world, you wouldn’t need credit. You could pay for everything in cash and not worry about it. But, this world is far from perfect. Very few people don’t use credit in some way, shape, or form. And each of those people could just as easily be effected by any change in the FICO algorithm. Almost every other financially related type of company has some regulation. Banks, Credit Unions, Credit Card companies, Payday lenders, and even the stock market have lots of regulation and oversight. But not the company that determines how much a person can use those organizations and whose product is solely responsible for determining how much they can use them or at what rate. Shouldn’t they have some regulation or oversight?

It’s clear what I think on this. (yes) What do you all think? Should FICO have some regulation and oversight?

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